One Hundred Grand
by Seabiscuit152000
Summary: You will find the story inside (not completed)
1. Prerace

Every night Smith drifted off to the sound of raindrops ringing off the barn roof. Every morning he woke to the same sound. The National Weather Sevice switchboard took more phone calls in that week than ever in its history, with nearly every callers asking if the skies would clear for Seabiscuit's run at the Handicap that Saturday. The rain didn't relent and Smith had no choice but to work the horse in the mud.

Early in the week, Smith brought Seabiscuit and Kayak out together. Howard stood by the barns and blinking at the clouds, a sarcastic smile on his face. He watched as the horse slogged through the mud, Seabiscuit dogging and taunting until Kayak pinned his ears and abruptly quit. They took the two horses back to the barn and cooled them out together. Kayak, clearly frustrated, took a lunge at Seabiscuit, dragging a groom with him. Smith was pleased. Seabiscuit was his old nasty self. Got to stop working these two together.

The rain kept falling. Smith kept working the horses. Kayak handled the mud well; Seabiscuit didn't. "You know," said Howard, "I wish one thing. It's that Kayak's four mud-running legs might be attached to Seabiscuit's racing heart. Then I'd have something." the tapping of rain carried his words away.

Two days before the race, the heavens finally relented.The drying irons rolled out. Fifty track workers slogged over the course, sponging the mud out of the puddles. Slowly, the track dried.

Early on the morning of March 2, race day, groom Harry Bradshaw came down the shed row, poured a helping of oats into Seabiscuit's bucket, then stepped out from under the shed row roof. At last the sun was breaking through. Bradshaw turned his face toward it. "Be with him today," he said.

Smith came up, working a strip of buckskin in his fingers.

"He's right as rain, Mr. Smith," said Bradshaw.

"Wrong word, Harry."

The trainer stood back to let the horse eat. Seabiscuit heard his voice and nosed over his half door. Smith lay the flat of the hand on him.

"Today's the day," he said.

At eight o'clock Howard's stable agent stepped into the track secretary's office, scrawled the name Seabiscuit onto an entry slip, and dropped it into the entry box. He was the first horse entered. Then the agent dropped Kayak's name in. Rain or shine, both horses would run.

The sun was still straining to clear the east of the grandstand when the Howards pulled up to the barn. Pollard was already there. Howard looked anxiously at the jockey's leg, the brace swelling the boot, and put his hand over Pallord's shoulder. Pollard assured him that he'd be okay. Smith swung Pollard up on Seabiscuit to stretch his legs. Howard got up on his saddle horse, Chulo, Smith got on Pumpkin, and sextet trotted out to the course for a prerace blowout. Marcela walked with them to the track apron and watch them go, her hands tight on the rail. The track was dry and fast. Smith signaled to Pollard, and Seabiscuit broke off and kicked over the track. Pollard talked in Seabiscuit's ear as they whirled through a quarter mile in a scorching twenty-two seconds. Seabiscuit was ready to go. Pollard dismounted and went home to spend a few hours with Agnes.


	2. The Day Of Race

People had begun gathering by the track gates just after dawn. By nine-thirty, the parking lot was already swollen with cars. Many people had driven across the nation to see the race; virtually every state in the union was represented by a license plate. They threw the gate open at ten. Five thousands fans gushed into the grandstand and clubhouse, staking out their territory with blankets and spring jackets."It looked," wrote _Thoroughbred Record _correspondent Barry Whitehead, "like the Oklahoma landrush." The fans found Santa Anita decked out in all its splendor. In the clubhouse and turf club, arches of acacias, columns of jonquils, and giant gardenias with fifteen hundred blossoms stretched overhead, white peat beds of irises, white primeroses, peach blossoms, and tulips lined the entire interior.

By ten-thirty, the grandstand was filled to capacity. By noon the parking lot couldn't fit another car, and the overflow spilled out onto the track's decorative lawns. A horse-loving priest from the church across the street opened his yard to let fans park there for free. Still the cars kept coming, snarling every local road for the entire day. Trains chugged up all afernoon; one of them, from San Francisco, had all seventeen cars filled to bursted with Seabiscuit fans. Up in the press box, reporters from all over the world arrived. Over the next few hours they would churn out half a million words on the Morse wires, Teletypes, and typewriters. The club-house roof and the top of the tote board were lined with newsreel cameras. In the luxury boxes, celebrities filed in: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Sonja Henie, James Stewart, and Mervyn LeRoy. Bing Crosby had stayed up all night recording at Universal so he could have the day off, and came with Mrs. Bing, rooting for yet another hpeless long shot from their barn, Don Mike.

By midafternoon, seventy-eight thousand people had crammed into the track, more than ten thousand in the infield alone. It was officially the second-larged crowd ever to attend a horse race in America, but because the record tally, at the Kentucky Derby, was famously exaggerated, the attendance at this hundred-grander was undoubtedly the largest. Radios all over the world were tuned to the broadcast from Santa Anita. The town of Willits was at a standstill. Up in Flint, Michigan, Howard had arranged to have the loudspeakers in the Buick salesroom rigged to broadcast the race.

The afternoon ticked on. The race approached.

At home, Pollard made his final prerartions. Agnes strung a Saint Christopher medal onto a necklace and give it to him. He slipped it on under his shirt. Before he left, he promised Agnes that he'd bring her flowers from the winner's wreath.


	3. The Talk and Mount Time

The first big gust from the crowd came as Seabiscuit was led from the barn to the paddock. Marcela, who had stood with him in the barn, stayed behind."I'd seen Johnny's leg," she said."I just couldn't watch it."

When Pollard walked into the paddock, he was greeted by Doc Babcock, who had flown down from Willits. The doctor carefully unrolled Pollard's leg bandages.

Yummy, who was there at the start, was there for the end. David Alexander was with him. Yummy, Alexander remembered, "sidled up to me like some character out of a spy novel."

"I've got it," Yummy whispered.

When Alexander asked what he had, Yummy flashed a little bottle of bow-wow wine, secreted away in his coat pocket. He told Alexander about his promise to Pollard: If he won, Yummy would sneak it to him.

Pollard strode over to his mount. Smith pulled the saddle over Seabiscuit's withers and tighted the girth. Marcela's Saint Christopher medal shone against the saddle cloth. Howard was beside himself with anxiety. When he was nervous he was talkative, and he had spent the afternoon called Marcela at the barn over and over again and chatting at her. Now he prattled on at Pollard, giving him every needless detail of how to ride the race. Pollard humored him, then turned to Smith. The old cow-puncher lifted Pollard onto Seabiscuit's back.

"You know the horse, and the horse knows you," said Smith, winking. "Bring him home."

Howard tapped out a cigarette and tried to light it. His hand were trembling so much that his match went out. He lit a second match, then a third, and they too sputtered out. Alexander wished him luck.

"You're shaking like a leaf," he said watching Howard work on the fourth match.

"I guess I'm a little nervous," Howard replied, smiling.

Seabiscuit and Pollard stepped down the long lane toward the track. Howard was whispering, "I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can." His jaws quivered.

As Seabiscuit stepped onto the track, swinging his head left, then right, the fans erupted in a massive ovation, drowning out the bugle playing "Boots and Saddles." There was no question about the crowd's allegiance. In the paddock the horsemen, virtually to a man, were hoping that if they didn't get it, the old Biscuit would. "I'd like to see Seabiscuit win," said a rival owner, "even though I'm running against him." Up in the press box, Jolly Roger and all the other Wise We Boys had dropped their objectivity. Even Oscar Otis was up there, cheering Pollard on.

Alexander looked up at Pollard as he passed. The Cougar, Alexander later wrote, had "the old impish go-to-hell grin" on his face. Alexander thought of Huck Finn.

Seabiscuit walked to the gate, the applause building and building. In the hush of the barn, Marcela suddenly changed her mind. She ran down the shed row, cut out into the daylight, and rushed toward the track. She knew she couldn't get to the grandstand in time. She spotted a water wagon parked ahead, track workers perched up on top of it, and ran toward it. Her dress whipped in the wind.


	4. The Last Race for Seabiscuit

The bell rang in Pollard's ears, and he felt Seabiscuit drop and push beneath him, hammering the track and powering forward. There was the rushing sound of seventy-five thousand voices and the tumbling motion of horses and the flight of wind and dirt and the airy unreal feeling of mass and gravity slipping away.

They rolled down the homestretch for the first time, Pollard felt the rightness of Seabiscuit's stride, the smooth strumming under him. Whichcee had the lead. Pollard let Seabiscuit hunt him. They bent through the first turn, Pollard holding his mount one path from the rail, an open lane ahead. A splendid spot.

Pollard could sense the pace as they straightened down the backstretch: blistering fast. But he knew Whichcee had stamina, and he couldn't let him steal away. He had to drive Whichcee hard to break him. He held Seabiscuit a half length behind him, keeping just far enough out from the rail to give himself clear running room. Whichcee strained to stay ahead. The two horses blazed down the backstretch together, cutting six furlongs in 1:11 1/2; though they were set to run a grueling mile and a guarter, the fastest sprinters on earth would have been drained to the bottom to beat such a time. Whichcee screamed along the rail, stretching out over the backstretch, trying to hold his head in front. Seabiscuit stalking him with predatory lunges. Wedding Call tracked them, just behind and outside of Seabiscuit as they pushed for the far turn. They clipped through a mile in 1:36, nearly a second faster than Seabiscuit and War Admral's record-shattering split in their 1938 match race. Seabiscuit still pushed at Whichcee. Pollard, up in the saddle, was a lion poised for the kill.

They leaned around the final turn, and Seabiscuit pulled at Pollard's hands, telling him he was ready. The rail spun away to the left, and Whichcee's hindquarters rose and fell beside them. Wedding Call made his move, throwing his shadow over them from the right. Pollard stayed where he was, holding his lane one path out from the rail, leaving himself room to move around Whichcee when the time came.

The field was gathering, and the space around them compressed. Horses were all around, their bodies elongated in total effort. Then, in an instant, they came inward with the synchronicity of a flurry of birds pivoting in the air. Wedding Call clattered up against Seabiscuit, bumping him toward the rail behind Whichcee. The path ahead closed.

Seabiscuit felt the urgency and tugged at the reins. Pollard had nowhere to sent him. He rose halfway up in the saddle, holding Seabiscuit back, his leg straining under the weight. Whichcee and Wedding Call formed a wall in front of him. A terrible thought came to Pollard: _There is no way out._

A jockey in the pack heard a deep, plaintive sound rise up over the shouts from the crowd. It was Pollard, crying out a prayer. A moment later, Whichcee wavered and sagged a few inches to his right just as Wedding Call's momentum carried him slightly to the right. A slender hole opened before Seabiscuit. Pollard measured it in his mind. Maybe it was wide enough; maybe it was not. If Pollard tried to take it, it was highly likely that he would clip his right leg on Wedding Call. He knew what that would means. He needed an explosion from Seabiscuit, every amp of his old speed and more. He leaned forward in the saddle and shouted, "_Now _Pop!"

Carried 130 pounds, 22 more than Wedding Call and 16 more than Whichcee, Seabiscuit delivered a tremendous surge. He slashed into the hole, disappeared between his two larger opponents, then burst into the lead. Pollard's leg cleared Whichcee by no more than an inch. Whichcee tried to go with Seabiscuit. Pollard let his mount dog him, mocking him, and Whichcee broke. Seabiscuit shook free and hurtled into backstretch alone as the field fell away behind him. Pollard dropped his head and rode for all he was worth. Joe Hernandez's voice cut over the crowd, calling out Seabiscuit's name, and was instantly swallowed in the uproar from the grandstand. One of the stable hands yelled to Marcela that Seabiscuit had the lead. She shrieked.

In the midst of all the whirling noise of that supreme moment, Pollard felt peaceful. Seabiscuit reached and pushed and Pollard folded and unfolded over his shoulders and they breathed together. A thought pressed into Pollard's mind:_ We are alone._

Twelve straining Thoroughbreds; Howard and Smith in the grandstand; Agnes in the surged crowd; Woolf behind Pollard, on Heelfly; Marcela up on the water wagon with her eyes squeezed shut; the leaping shouting reporters in the press box; Pollard's family crowded around the radio in a neighbor's house in Edmonton; tens of thousands of roaring spectators and millions of radio listeners painting this race in their imaginations: All this fell away. The world narrowed to a man and his horse, running.

In the center of the track, a closer broke from the pack and rolled into Seabiscuit's lead, a ghost from his past. It was Kayak, charging at him with a fury. Pollard never looked back. He knew who it was.

Pollard felt a pause. For the last time in his life, Seabiscuit eased up to tease an opponent. Kayak came to him and drew even. Up on Kayak, Buddy Haas had never heard such thunder as was pouring from the grandstand and infield. He drilled everything he had, he said later, at Seabiscuit.

Pollard let Seabiscuit savor this last rival, then asked him again. He felt the sweet press of sudden acceleration. A moment later, Pollard and Seabiscuit were alone again, burning over the track, Kayak spinning off behind, the wire crossing overhead.


End file.
